Sync Hacks: How to Use BitTorrent Sync for DJs and Producers

Sync Hacks is a column dedicated to exploring new applications for Sync, as built by users like you. BitTorrent Sync is a free, unlimited, secure file-syncing app. (And now, it’s 2X faster.) If you’ve got an epic Sync idea, use-case or how-to, shoot us an email at sync[at]bittorrent.com.

In this week’s Sync Hacks: Ryan Dejaegher (@ryandejaegher), contributor for DJ Techtools, wrote a Sync tutorial for DJs and producers. Ryan walks through how Sync works to sort your music library, manage remote collaborations, and share big projects. Let’s get educated.

Overview

DJs and producers want to be able to organize the same music library on any computer, have Ableton Projects available on all computers, and Traktor collection synced across machines. One solution is Dropbox – but it carries its own limitations in terms of cost and storage limits. In the search for an alternative appeared BitTorrent Sync, which uses the distributed power of BitTorrent to cleanly sync your files across as many machines as you want.

Here are some features of BitTorrent Sync that make it a great syncing service for DJs and Producers:

• Free and no storage limits: Storage is only limited by the size of your HD. Sync 2TB of data with an external HD.

• Private and secure: No middleman or third party data center involved, so data stays yours. File transfers are encrypted and folders are connected to one another by a randomly generated pass key (check out the security features here)

• Fast – P2P Speeds: The more computers sharing a folder, the faster you’ll be able to push changes across all of them. Sync uses peer-to-peer technology, the same technology that makes BitTorrent one of the fastest and most efficient methods of file distribution on the Internet.

Setting up shared folders on BitTorrent Sync

The only major setting that BitTorrent Sync has comes in the type of synchronization:

Full Access (2 way sync): This is just like Dropbox – add/delete any files or folders from one folder and it is added/deleted from the other folder. Great because it creates mirrored folders, bad because you have to be a bit more cautious about deleting things.

Read Only (1 way sync): One folder is the master and the other is a slave. So files that are added/deleted to the master are added or deleted from the slave. But any files that are added or deleted to the slave folder won’t sync to the master folder. This could be a good option if you’re doing an off-site backup where you don’t want anything being accidentally deleted.